Human Rights Failure at Fordham Law School

The United Nations General Assembly has been holding its annual session, with this year's theme being "Focusing on People: Striving for peace and a decent life on a sustainable planet."

The notion of "focusing on people" naturally brings to mind the struggle to protect the fundamental human rights of everyone on our planet. Human rights, of course, is a highly fraught issue, particularly at the UN where it is frequently honored more in the breach than in the observance.

But you can always count on the representative of the Holy See to make sure that human rights are understood in their full and correct sense. Today, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher presented
the Holy See's contribution to the debate. In his remarks, he said the following:

Putting people always first means protecting, at every stage and in every circumstance, the dignity of the person, and its human rights and fundamental freedoms, and in a specific way, the rights to life and to freedom of religion from which all other rights flow and which are therefore the common foundation of the pillars of peace and security and integral human development. These two human rights are indivisible from those other rights and fundamental freedoms relating to a dignified spiritual, material and intellectual life for each citizen and for their families – among others, the right to food, the right to water, the right for housing, the right to a safe environment and the right to work.

One would think that this understanding of human rights, which is so deeply rooted in Catholic social teaching, would resonate clearly with all Catholics and Catholic institutions, as well as all persons with good will. It is in keeping with the best aspects of the UN's tradition, particularly the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Tragically, Fordham Law School has apparently decided to reject that vision of human rights.

While Fordham University as a whole continues to assert its self-understanding as a "Catholic and Jesuit" institution, one would be very hard-pressed to find evidence that the Law School views itself that way, or that it sees value at all in Catholic legal tradition or jurisprudence.

The latest example of their abandonment of a Catholic understanding of law comes in a particularly egregious way. Last week, Fordham Law's "Leitner Center for International Law and Justice" hosted a
presentation by a representative of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, entitled "Using the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda to Advance Sexual and Reproductive Rights".

Now let's be perfectly clear about something. The International Planned Parenthood Federation openly boasts in their 2015-2016 report of being the perpetrator of approximately 1.1 million abortions worldwide, and "counseling" and "consulting" with several million women about having an abortion. They brag about having provided almost 5 million "abortion-related services". They distribute hundreds of millions of doses of chemical contraceptives that can cause further early abortions. They systematically work to undermine or eliminate legal protections for unborn children around the world, under the Orwellian guise of "reproductive rights" -- a code word that includes legalized abortion.

In other words, IPPF is likely the single most prolific killer of human beings in the world -- a massive violator of the fundamental right to life of every human. They work for the oppression of the weakest and most vulnerable among us and seek to eliminate legal protection of an entire class of human beings whose only offense is that they haven't been born yet. It is an evil organization.

To celebrate IPPF in a forum dedicated to law and justice is perverse in the extreme. But this is not an isolated event by the "Center for International Law and Justice". Its list of events and publications demonstrate a consistent advocacy for legalized abortion, with never a dissenting voice being heard. Nor is that an isolated event for the Law School in general, which encourages students to concentrate studies in "reproductive rights" but doesn't offer a single class in Catholic legal studies.

Put aside for a moment the Catholic Church's unequivocal and unbroken historical denunciation of abortion as an egregious violation of fundamental human rights. Forget for a moment the Jesuit Pope's repeated condemnation of abortion and of the "ideological colonization" that seeks to impose Western values on developing countries. Clearly Fordham Law School cares little for these Catholic or Jesuit traditions.

All that's necessary is to look at secular human rights sources. How about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948, which states plainly that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." Or the Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted by the UN in 1959, which states as a foundational premise that "the child... needs special safeguards and care, including appropriate legal protection, before as well as after birth", and guarantees that "the child shall enjoy special protection… In the enactment of laws for this purpose, the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration." Or the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989, which reiterates the guarantee of legal protection before birth and says that "the best interests of the child shall be a primary consideration".

How does killing 1.1 million unborn children a year fit into that tradition of "human rights" or "law and justice"?

The fact is that never, in any document or declaration, has the UN or the international community ever recognized abortion as a fundamental human right. Subsidiary UN agencies and committees have done so, under intense pressure from Western governments and abortion advocates, again under the misleading rubric of "reproductive rights". But they have not yet been able to revise the traditional understanding of "human rights" to exclude unborn children.

The Holy See's presentation at the UN was an uplifting and beautiful tribute to true human rights. Fordham Law School has chosen a different direction, one that betrays Catholicism, the Jesuit charism, and even secular human rights.